An elegant foyer introduces your home’s personality and welcomes your guests. Find entryway ideas guaranteed to make a stylish first impression.
Consider the entrance hall your opportunity to sweep guests off their feet. Whether visitors are welcomed into a soaring space crowned with a sparkling chandelier, or a cozy foyer with warm wood floors and a bouquet of blooms, the entryway sets the tone for the rest of your home. This transitory spot is the perfect place to showcase a sleek console table and statement mirror, a bold painting or sculpture, or an ornately tiled floor with a vibrant color palette. Utilize this prominent entrance space to add elegant decor details that will help to elevate the overall ambience of your home. Take a cue from these stunning entrances from the Architectural Digest archives and ensure that the foyer of your home is as spectacular as the rooms that follow.
Go Bold with Color
For a 17th-century-French-style mansion in Houston, interior designer Miles Redd created a powerful entrance hall that blends contemporary art and traditional architecture and furnishings into a stylish mash-up. Taxicab-yellow paint serves as the brilliant backdrop for an Eric Peters painting, a plaster chandelier by Stephen Antonson, a button-tufted bench by John Rosselli & Assoc., and a blue-and-white ceramic jar mounted on a pedestal; the metal balustrade stands out like lace.
Source: Photo: Thomas Loof
Limy
Interior designer Bruce Shostak and his partner, Craig Fitt, decorated the entrance hall of their circa-1817 house in Claverack, New York, in a lively and period-perfect Federal style. The front door opens to walls painted a vibrant apple-green, mismatched striped runners by Woodard & Greenstein, and tiger-maple antiques that match the original banister.
Source: Photo: William Waldron
Create an Art Gallery
At Obercreek, the Hudson River Valley farm of investor Alex Reese and his wife, architect Alison Spear, the stone-floored entrance hall is lined with family portraits, hung frame to frame on the pale gray walls. Heirloom Windsor chairs flank the front door, and the 19th-century settees are upholstered in a flame stitch by Scalamandré.
Source: Photo: Joshua McHugh
The Hampton Look
In a stylish Hamptons home devised by Deborah Berke and decorated by Thomas O’Brien, the latter’s pendant lights from Aero join an Alexandre Noll sculpture (far end) and a Donald Baechler painting (right) in the entrance hall; an Alexander Calder lithograph is mounted at the bottom of the staircase.
Source: Photo: Laura Resen
The Dark Side
In photographer Steven Klein’s entrance hall in Bridgehampton, New York, a Klein image of Brad Pitt pops against the space’s black, white, and brown palette. Horizontal boards amplify the room’s length, the peaked ceiling lends height and drama, and a series of square shapes—the windows, the front door’s panes of glass, and the paneled interior door—provide a stately rhythm.
Source: Photo: Steven Klein
New Yorker
Circa-1930 FontanaArte lanterns from Bernd Goeckler Antiques join a framed work by Robert Longo and a floor sculpture by Richard Serra in the entrance hall of a New York apartment renovated by designer Nicholas Kilner.
Source: Photo: Douglas Friedman
13th Century
The 13th-century entrance hall in this Irish castle was remodeled in the 1830s after a fire; the 17th-century Brussels tapestries came into the family in 1935.
Source: Photo: Simon Watson
Pop Culture
The travertine-tiled entrance gallery of Donny Deutsch's Manhattan townhouse is anchored by bespoke Ingrao Inc. sofas, both upholstered in a Perennials bouclé.
Source: AD
Beverly Hills
A lamp by Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co. and a glass sculpture by John Hogan for The Future Perfect top a vintage Maison Raphael console in the entry of Ricky Martin's Beverly Hills home. The painting is by Corydon Cowansage.
Source: AD
Contemporary
A deep-red Anish Kapoor sculpture greets visitors in the entrance hall of a Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, housedesigned by Charles Zana for a couple with a blue-chip contemporary-art collection. The text painting is by Richard Prince, and the console is by Eric Schmitt; a dramatic glass-bead sculpture by Jean-Michel Othoniel dangles from 30 feet above.